Friday, July 29, 2005

Quintuplet Teenagers vs. Quadruplet Nieces

About todays update:
Todays comic (Comic #3) introduces the secondary characters Zone (the brown haired one), Marty (the spikey orange haired one), and Veronica (the female). For the first storyline in the comic, I felt it was important to include them and introduce their characters. But that's it though, I'm only just introducing them. They'll get even more better as the comic goes along, just now they aren't important to this storyline. I'm going to have some real fun with these particular characters, haha.

Directly under today's comic, there's a little text section titled "Rantings from a crazed spider". That shouldn't be there because its the c0mmentary for Comic 2 (which is now in the archives). I can't fix it because Comic Genesis is down, so hopefully its not that bothersome.

"Quintuplets" vs. Quadruplets
Anyone remember the show Quintuplets? I didn't think so. Quintuplets was Andy Richter's second attempt at making it in a television show that didn't star Conan O'Brien. It was about a family that included a Mother, Father, and their quintuplet children (quintuplet is a set of 5 children born at the same time). The show's downfall is the quintuplets who are nothing more than horribly cliched teenagers. They were all just boring and tired sterotypes that we've seen in other shows a thousand times before. If you saw it once, you saw it all, and that's why this show isn't on anymore....it's just another cancelled classic.

That's what I want this comic NOT to be. This comic is just like Quintuplets except that its now about quadruplets and there's one person raising them. The nieces started out as cliches of their own, but they evolved into realistic personalities. That's what makes a character a "good character"...how human and believable they are. My goal with the characters in Niece Web is to make them seem like everyday people that you may meet in real life. That way, you as the readers can relate to them more, as you relate to people in real life. That's what I'm striving for in Niece Web, but too bad that's not what the writers of Quintuplets were striving for. The quintuplet characters were so generic and stereotypical that it was just sorry to look at. As stereotypes, they're not believable because they seem fake and contrived. Nobody could relate to them and nobody cared about them. Nobody cares, nobody watches and the show gets cancelled. So R.I.P Quinuplets, we hardly knew thy. Maybe Andy Richter can get his job back as Conan O'Brien's lackey. Meanwhile, I hope you continue to enjoy the comic.

Later Taters!

Wednesday, July 27, 2005

Feliz CumpleaƱos Nenamocha

Today is my best friend Nenamocha's 20th birthday!!! May this year be filled with joy!

There are new comic navigation buttons up. The comic navigation buttons are those square pictures below the comic that say "First Comic" "Previous Comic", etc. They are on the main page and on each comic archive page. The old buttons were kind of crappy looking, so I touched them up. There are 5 of them, even though they all might not appear depending on the comic you're on. They are:

First Comic- Goes to the very first Niece Web comic (Disasterous Date Part 1)
Previous Comic- Goes to the comic directly before the current comic you're looking at.
Next Comic- Goes to the comic directly after the current comic you're looking at.
Latest Comic- Goes to the home page where the latest comic is displayed.
Storyline Crawler- This one goes back to the first comic in the current storyline you're on. You can also navigate storylines by cycling through their first comics, hence the name "Storyline Crawler".

The navigation buttons make cycling through the Niece Web comic archive that much easier.

Variations of those 5 buttons are on nearly every webcomic website, so if you know this already...sorry to bore you. If you didn't know, well now you know.

Later Taters!

Tuesday, July 26, 2005

Quality Control

Todays comic (Comic #2) has a significant jump in quality from the first one. I decided that the flat color look could be touched up, so I added some shading and whatnot to the characters. It looks SO MUCH better, don't you think?

The quality has also jumped in the line art department too. So far I have drawn about 6 usable comics and Comic #1 was the very first one. Comic #2 was the last one I drew and finished up. So basically I did 4 comics in between the 2 posted comics and my line art has evolved between that time. So if you wanted an explanation for such a drastic change, now you know.

I really appreciate the first round of comments that I got from my readers, it makes my job as a cartoonist that much more gratifying.

For todays comic, I used a little known cliche that I picked up from Japanese manga. In the very last panel, each of the nieces has a speech balloon with elipsis (3 dots) in them. That just means that they are being silent on purpose. Just in case some of you guys didn't get that.

Until the next update, later taters.